In 1981 Kathleen Turner became a big star thanks to the role of ultimate femme fatale in classic thriller Body Heat. By an ironic twist of fate, a decade later she starred as the character that in most Hollywood films usually has to deal with femme fatales as antagonists – a titular character of V. I. Warshawski, crime film directed by Jeff Kanew.
Film is based on Deadlock, novel by Sara Paretsky and second part in the series about Chicago female private investigator Victoria Iphigenia “V. I.” Warshawski. While she is good in her work, the rest of her life leaves much to be desired – her finances are messy, her apartment is messy and her private life is messy too, partially thanks to Chicago news reporter and non-monogamous on-off boyfriend Murray Ryerson (played by Jay O. Saunders). Warshawski seeks for the alternative in bars and seems to have found it after picking Bernard “Boom Boom” Grafalk (played by Stephen Meadows), good-looking former hockey player. What was supposed to be a romantic evening turns into something completely different when Boom Boom brings his 12-year old daughter Katherine “Kat” Grafalk (played by Angela Goethals) to Warshawski’s apartment and asks for her babysitting services while he conducts some business at the docks. There he dies in explosion which police is likely to see as an accident, but Kat thinks it is a foul play involved and asks Warshawski to conduct investigation. Warshawski begins her work and, after being harassed by thugs, quickly concludes that Boom Boom’s death was part of bigger scheme that involved feuding family members, docking company in financial trouble, labour unions and organised crime.
V. I. Warshawski is based on the simple but promising concept of hard-boiled private detective who just happens to be woman. Kathleen Turner has embraced it with great enthusiasm and works very hard to make character believable and likeable to the audience. On one hand she displays all cliches associated with the likes of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe – lack of finesse, cynicism, salty language and occasional ability to get herself out of trouble through martial arts and gun play. On the other hand, she keeps her femininity and is showing maternal instincts towards her young “client”, played very well by Angela Goethals. This was one of the better roles in Turner’s career and she even repeated her few years later in series of BBC radio adaptations of Paretsky’s novels. The rest of the cast is solid, especially Jay O. Saunders who manages to get audience’s sympathy despite his lack of fidelity to the protagonist. Unfortunately, Turner’s efforts are ruined by incredibly dismal direction by Jeff Kanew who somehow makes relatively expensive production by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures look like routine television film. Script, which provides weak and predictable murder mystery that would end with melodramatic revelation at the end, doesn’t help either, just like Randy Edelman’s annoying music score. Kanew apparently attempted to turn rather serious novel by Paretsky into a comedy, but the effort failed because jokes aren’t funny or are simply too repetitive. Even attempt to spice things up with speedboat race look underwhelming. V. I. Warshawski, which was supposed to be start of new film franchise, failed miserably at box office and was even distributed direct into video stores in many countries. Perhaps it was made a decade too early, before time when its pseudo-feminist content and underdeveloped concept would have worked much better in the format of cable television series.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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